Music: Horton's Holiday Hayride coming to Boston

Thursday

Dec 7, 2017 at 2:42 PMDec 7, 2017 at 2:44 PM

By Jay N. MIller/For The Patriot Ledger

The Reverend Horton Heat not only performs a brand of turbo-charged rockabilly that infuses the music with sizzling elements of blues, country, surf rock, and spaghetti Western themes, but he also tends to go out on tour with a smorgasbord of like-minded purveyors of American roots music.

Sunday night the Reverend Horton Heat’s Holiday Hayride Tour touches down at The Sinclair in Cambridge, with a lineup that includes roots-rock legends The Blasters, twangy guitar ace Junior Brown, and Western swing/rockabilly star Big Sandy. The show begins at 8 p.m., and the Sinclair is located at 1 Church St., close by Harvard Square, with advance tickets $32, and day of sale tickets $35.

We caught up with the Revthis week as the tour, was kicking off near Pittsburgh. The Rev, aka Jim Heath, is a Dallas native who grew up loving rock, country, blues and pretty much any other music he heard. He played in a high school rock band, and eventually left the University of Texas to play full time with a rock cover band called Sweetbriar. When his young family required him to be home with a steadier income, he spent several years working as a soundman, using the old Sweetbriar public address system to work in local clubs.

But eventually Heath ran into a couple of life-changing events, when he saw a concert by The Cramps, who famously injected their rockabilly with punk rock, and then a bit later when he caught The Blasters, wherein Dave and Phil Alvin and their guys took traditional forms like folk, blues, and country and delivered it at rock tempos. Heath was inspired to go back to rock ’n’ roll.

A couple of Heath’s guitar solos when he’d been sitting in with touring bands had friends egging him on by saying stuff like “Preach it, reverend!” so that became part of the new band name. The singer’s tribute to the late Johnny Horton supplied the first name, and then a slight altering of his last name gave the world the Reverend Horton Heat.

From the start in 1985 the core group has been a trio, and the current lineup includes longtime member Jimbo Wallace on upright bass, with R.J. Contreras on drums. Through the years Heat’s profile has been enhanced with some nifty cross-promotion, such as having one of his songs used in “Beavis and Butt-head,” or having skateboarding video games like Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground use his tunes, or having his song “Big Red Rocket of Love” adapted for a Mazda Miata TV ad in 1999. Heat’s most recent album is 2014’s “REV,” and the next one is in the planning stages.

“We do like to tour with different acts like this, and we’ve been doing that a long time,” said Heath. “I can’t take credit for it, but I am lucky to have Scott Wise, who’s been my manager for 23 years, and works all that stuff out. He knows what I like, and how to put these package tours together. This particular one is really a heartfelt experience – The Blasters really changed my life when I heard them. Junior Brown is a giant influence on me. And Big Sandy was a real revelation when I first saw him, and realized what was happening on the West Coast rockabilly scene.”

Phil Alvin is still leading the Blasters as singer/guitarist, while brother Dave Alvin is devoted to his own solo career, but their impact on Heath was substantial, at a time when he was wondering if a musical career was worth it.

“It’s awesome to be touring with the Blasters, and I will be trying to get out and see as much of their sets as I can,” said Heath, 58. “After Sweetbriar, seeing them was definitely life-changing for me. Even then, it all seemed to be leading me back to the blues, but with that 1950’s type of rock they played. Right around the same time, when I saw The Cramps, The Blasters, and then the Stray Cats, it was like getting the green light for rockabilly.”

Heath’s playing also has some tasty dollops of surf rock, and we noted that “Pride of San Jacinto,” from his 1998 album “Space Heater” could easily be mistaken for a surf rocker, from someone like Quincy’s favorite son, Dick Dale.

“Well, I grew up in Corpus Christi, right on the ocean,” said Heath. “I tried to surf and I was just no good at it. But the waves there are small and slow, so that makes it difficult. But surfing is part of the culture there, so surf guitar was kind of a big deal when I was growing up. The Ventures, “(theme from) Hawaii 5-0,” and Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys were all over the radio. Later I got into it even more and discovered some of the greats like Dick Dale, Davey Allen and the Arrowheads, and of course Link Wray. Link was not necessarily surf rock, but he kind of bridged the gap between surf rock, country, and heavy metal; I consider Link Wray to be the godfather of heavy metal. I was also influenced a lot by spaghetti Westerns, Ennio Morricone and all those great movie themes.”

Touring relentlessly, Heath said he is always looking for song ideas, although he tends to do the final writing in one sustained burst prior to recording. Heath’s songs are packed with humor, clever word play, and witty parodies of common lyrical tropes, but they’re also all framed by his wizardry on the six strings, and whatever the predominant style at any given time, the term “psychobilly” aptly describes his adrenalin-fueled music.

“I am always open to ideas for songs, and I’ll put them on my phone,” said Heath. “I’ll use my little notes section for lyric fragments, song titles, or ideas. Then, all at once, I’ll spend two or three weeks and just focus on writing – turning those ideas into something more. Then it’s a case of figuring out which ones are the best, and turning them into songs. I may be collecting ideas over a couple years or so, a long time, before I buckle down and finish ‘em off.”

One big advantage to the Reverend’s records is that they all sound live, exciting and red-hot performances that leap off the vinyl (or CD or whatever).

“We basically go for the live sound, recording with the band all together, as much as possible,” Heath explained. “But we don’t always do it like that. I go back and re-do vocals, for instance. Some aspects are difficult to record, like vocal intonations are hard to do with a really loud drummer. And we knew one band that used to put their bass on a scaffolding 20 feet up in the air to get the best sound. So, we will re-do some parts. But in general we kind of mimic that 1950s process of recording, because we want to be true to what we sound like in concert.”

“Of course, since about the 1970s, people are not used to hearing what a three-piece band sounds like,” Heath added. “Led Zeppelin was essentially a three-piece like us, but their records would have five guitar parts. These days, we might add an acoustic guitar to the mix to fill out the sound, and we’ll often add piano these days too. But usually when we do that, it is to underline the guitar and vocals, so it’s not on top of the mix.”

With a three-decade career and 11 albums, Heath has a pretty thick songbook to choose his setlists from, but this tour is especially challenging.

“This trip is different because this is a Christmas tour, so we had to get all our stage sets ready, and then work up our Christmas songs,” Heath noted. “Then, we had to get up to speed with Big Sandy, because he comes out and sits in with us, and we back him up, so we had to practice those songs so we’d be ready with all the music. So the preparation has been hectic, but today it is all falling into place. Songs come and go in our setlists, and we will occasionally go way back and add one in we haven’t done for a while. We stick to the same basic list for a tour, however, since we have support people, lights and sound and so on, who need to know what we’re doing. But I’ll still throw them a curve ball once in a while.”